The Dark Defiles

by Richard K. Morgan

  Felt the nape of her neck prickle with being watched.

  Her pulse kicked in her throat, she spun about.

  Found herself face-to-face with a gaunt figure in a wolf-skin cloak, an impossible yard and a half away.

  CHAPTER 64

  f the seven dwenda he took down in the fight, he apparently wounded three badly enough—well enough actually, Gil—to kill them outright or pretty fast thereafter. But the other four have all managed to crawl some distance away from where they fell. One of them is still trailing his own guts from the eviscerating slash Ringil put in his belly.

  They are all trying to get out of the stone circle. They’re all trying, desperately, with gritted breath, to get away from him.

  And at the limits of its extent, crowding in the spaces between the stones, the dwenda host from the plain below have gathered close, massed ranks with helmets on and visors down, utterly silent, like an assembly of armored ghosts spectating at the cage of some captured wild beast.

  Gil cuts them a thin smile, then sets about killing their comrades.

  One of the injured dwenda has almost reached the edge of the circle, so he starts there. Bends and grabs the armored figure by one limp ankle, drags it bodily back from whatever perimeter between the stones it was trying to cross. Black gloved hands that grasped and tugged at the coarse grass, now lifting in imprecation toward the watching host. He thinks it makes a strangled noise. He puts a boot on its back and skewers the Ravensfriend down through the rib cage, pins the dwenda to the ground. He levers the blade back and forth to be sure he’s found the heart, waits until the creature’s spasms cease.

  Next.

  By the time he’s done all four, he’s working up a sweat, and the iron spiked crown is slippery on his brow when he bends. He straightens up from the last execution, the reek of dwenda lifeblood thick in his throat. Stares around at the watching host, the stones that hold them at bay, then up at the storm on the hill behind him. He pushes the crown up his brow with the back of his hand, sniffs hard and wipes at his mouth, though there’s really not much blood on it as far as he can tell.

  Right. Clan Talonreach. Let’s be having you.

  He turns and heads up the hill.

  And the stone circle goes with him.

  HE REMEMBERS THE SAME EFFECT FROM TIME IN THE GREY PLACES A YEAR ago. A prison of misshapen granite bars, a mobile ring of armor with Ringil at its heart. But back then the stones were fleeting phantom traces, flickering into existence when he stood still, fading out as soon as he moved toward the nearest of them.

  Now, somehow, they stand solid as real world stone—he sees the detail of weathered granite and soft moss patching with a lucid vision that’s so sharp it makes his eyes ache—and yet each monolith moves through the grassy ground like a ship’s keel cutting water. The gathered dwenda host parts before the effect, surging back like broken waves off rock. The corpses of the dwenda he’s killed stay where they are on the ground, one or two of them catching against one stone or another in his wake, then tugging loose and finally free of the circle altogether. The monoliths leave them indifferently behind, keep pace with their master like some impassive honor guard.

  And when they touch the outer edges of the Talons of the Sun, there’s a brief flicker of lightning that seems to light the entire gray sky from end to end.

  Something sighs, something unfolds.

  It’s as if he’s suddenly standing in freezing fog. Vague, tentacular stripes of darkness reach up around him like riverbed weed caught in a current, or bend away in all directions like leather straps tied tight. Through the mist, he sees the figures of dwenda, locked into postures that he only slowly recognizes as glyph casts, frozen in time. There’s a shivering tension through the air, like lightning undischarged, and he understands that if this is Clan Talonreach, then they already have a fight on their hands. Against what, he cannot tell, except to know that it isn’t him.

  Is it over, then?

  A voice like the wind, soundless in his head, and weary beyond anything he’s ever heard in the real world. For a moment, he thinks of his father and the exhausted bitterness in his voice back at Eskiath house, but this is something astronomical magnitudes beyond. As if Gingren had somehow managed to live an eternity, travel every land under the band, and still find no solution for his woes, for the city leadership that failed to live up to his martial dreams, the wife he could not domesticate, the son he could not own.

  You talking to me? he asks. Is what over?

  The war. Is the war finally done?

  Ringil blinks. Just getting started, last time I checked.

  And yet you have come. The first Core Blood commander we have seen since the Binding. The first full human to enter here since our Purposing. Have you come to stand the cadre down at last, as was promised? To reverse the Codes, to dissolve the Bond and set free the Source?

  I, uh … Ringil gives up and sighs. Lowers the Ravensfriend until its tip touches the grass. Look, whoever you are, you’re going to have to slow down. I just got here.

  A long pause. You wish me to file a report?

  He pauses himself, for almost as long. Yeah. That’d be nice.

  IN THE DAYS OF DESPERATION, THE VOICE TELLS HIM SOUNDLESSLY, A FINAL weapon was forged.

  The war had torn great rifts in the fabric of the world, damaged it in ways that were impossible for the minds of men to either understand or repair. Great storms blew up, winds howling from places humankind was never equipped to venture, unleashing desolation on all they touched. Whole armed hosts were sucked into these gray spaces, never to be seen or heard from again, whole territories were submerged. Skies darkened for generations, it rained fire and jellied gray horror, the moon itself tore apart and died.

  Some few survivors trickled back, most of them no longer sane. A handful who still had mouths to talk with, and minds to recall, spoke of a race of beings within the Grey Space Beyond, alien things either summoned by some faction of warring mankind or simply drawn scuttling to the scent of the damage done—and these creatures were powerful beyond belief. Some said they appeared in some strange way to be repairing the wounds gouged in the fabric of the world, others that they merely waited outside the boundaries of the real, biding their time for an invasion.

  A plan was scaffolded, materiel assembled, a cadre formed. Honor bound warriors from among the scant remaining cream of human soldiery, changed by human science at depths so basic that they could now survive and function comfortably inside the Grey Space, then tasked by the High Command with passing through the wounds of the world, building a beachhead there, capturing one of the creatures and harnessing its powers. It was thought that such a weapon would obliterate the existing impasse, negate the threat from the rifts, and create a victory so total that a negotiated peace was the only possible option for the defeated side. It was thought that such a weapon would end the war forever.

  A … creature? Ringil says faintly, because he can really only think of one candidate, and it’s making the inside of his head ring, as if from a close call battlefield blow to the helm. What kind of … never mind. Did they manage it? Did they chain this thing?

  Of course. Slight note of offense in the voice. The preparation was impeccable, the cadres dedicated, the Codes strong. How could the mission not succeed? You are Core, you are the Blood of Command. Look on us—do you not see?

  Ringil peers at the vague forms in the mist before him. Tangled straps and slow waving tentacles, perhaps some wrenched and twisted, darkened core over there at the center. He can make no sense of any of it. Uh … yeah, sure. I see. But if you think, I mean, uhm, if the war still isn’t over, then something went wrong. Right?

  The mission was a success, they bound the creature, and the Codes held. The cadre waited, entrenched beyond the borders of the real, ready to deploy. But while they held station, the one command they could not have predicted came in. Stand down. Abandon the field. Dismantle the weapon, set the creature free again and return home. Circumstanc
es have changed, no need to deploy.

  I bet that went down well.

  The cadres recoiled. They could not believe, would not believe that after all they had done, after all that had been done to them, to fit them for purpose—that now there was no need for any of it. They believed instead, chose to believe instead, that they had been betrayed. They fell back into the Grey Spaces, and they took the weapon with them. Here, they had the whole of time and space to hide in, to roam, to use the weapon if need be to defend themselves, but holding back its full force, haunting the margins of all human history instead, dipping in, dipping out, listening, always listening for true word from the High Command, to deploy at full strength and then to return home in triumph.

  But they stayed longer away than they knew, stayed far longer than had ever been planned. And in time, the gray spaces changed them, made them something else entirely. They bred and dispersed, formed clans and alliances, became a whole race unto themselves. And as they grew into their new existence, as memory faded with the unnumbered centuries, so they lost all track of what they once were. Mission brief became legend, legend became myth, myth became unquestioned truth. They went everywhere with their new truth, and finally they came home behind it—only to find home unrecognizable.

  In place of the glorious homeland their myths spoke of, they found a shattered world and only the primitive remnants of the mortal race to which they once belonged. And there they raised an overlordship built on the myths they thought they remembered. Perhaps they lied to themselves for comfort, perhaps they had really lost track of the truth by then. In any event, they reached a kind of peace, would perhaps have returned slowly to sanity but, just when they believed the war might really be done, they faced invasion from the veins of the Earth—a dark new foe from another place who drove them back out into the Grey Space and … are you laughing?

  Ringil stifles his chuckling with an effort. I, uhm, I’m sorry. It just fits so well with all the rest of Findrich’s fake antique shit. He summons supernatural allies from the shadows and all the time they’re a perfect match for his lizardshit bas relief wall art. They’re just as fake, and he never knew it. He wipes at his eyes. I’m sorry, you were saying … no, look, wait. Wait. Who … who exactly the fuck are you again?

  I am the Codes and the Binding Force, I am the Way and Means. I am the Chain that Holds the Source Restrained.

  And you couldn’t tell them—these cadres, he gestures at the frozen glyph-casting figures in the mist, these, the dwenda—you couldn’t tell them any of this? You couldn’t talk them down?

  It is not my place. I am the Way and Means only. I am bound to execution. I observe and I obey. I may not open fresh protocols.

  Ringil thinks of Anasharal and its magicked limits, of the Warhelm Ingharnanasharal and the spells that had somehow kept the one from becoming the other until the end. He nods soberly.

  I get it—you’re just another Helmsman.

  I’m not familiar with that term.

  Doesn’t matter. He looks again at the locked-up postures of Clan Talonreach in the mist. Feels the way they are aware of him, but cannot do anything about it—like catching the desperately rolling eye of an opposing soldier on the field, locked in combat with someone else. You want to tell me what’s going on in here? Why they’re all frozen like that?

  The Source stirs. It senses something. It is trying, for the first time in tens of thousands of years, to break loose. They have compressed its range to a fraction of a second in time so they can contain it more easily.

  How long’s that going to last?

  It is hard to know. The last time, the struggle was short—only a few decades in duration.

  Right. He turned the Ravensfriend in his hand, looked around in the foggy light. Maybe I can save you all some time here. Would you excuse me a moment?

  He turns and steps back out, away from the mist and what it contains. He stands on the coarse grass slope, facing down toward the gathered dwenda. The rough-hewn monoliths stand like sentinels, the storming fog and tentacles that form the Talons of the Sun tower and fountain up behind him like some murky, insubstantial kraken rearing to strike.

  Well, well, well, he calls down the slope in Naomic. The Elder Race in all its ancient glory. Got some bad news for you guys.

  From the front ranks of the dwenda, a figure steps forward. A gloved hand reaches up and tears the smooth helm off. The face beneath is pale and perfectly boned—yeah, aren’t they all—a poem in pallid beauty. Lips drawn back from teeth, brow furrowed in noble rage. The dwenda commander raises his free hand and points. His voice rings out across the space between them. His Naomic isn’t bad

  You can cower in the circle’s scope, mortal. But your face and name are fixed in our mind’s eye now and forever. You have earned the undying hatred of the Aldrain.

  Thought I had that already.

  The finger trembles visibly. The dwenda’s voice rises to a yell. We will haunt you! The rest of your life will be lived in fear of the twilight and the shadows from which we can slip at will. Your loved ones will never be safe, as long as you live; your children will be raised in horror of darkness and our touch, we will age their hearts with early terror, ruin the sinews of their growth, make them trembling and infirm before their time. And when you are old and helpless, we will come for you and them, and your living heads will be mounted out here in the Grey Places for all eternity.

  I have no children, Ringil tells him, impassive as the monoliths that ring him around. And if you plan on haunting me, you’d better get in the fucking queue. But nice try. Now let’s get down to the blood and bone, shall we?

  Yes! Shouted, vicious with joy. Yes! Face me!

  That’s not what I meant. Got a history lesson for you here. You think you’re an elder race, you think you’ve been around since the dawn of time? It’s a lie, all of it. And suddenly he’s shouting at them, some jagged chunk of dislodged rage, like some frustrated schoolmaster with recalcitrant students. There’s nothing in you, nothing that wasn’t once human. You’re not ancient immortals, you’re fucking children. You’re the bastard-bred offspring of men who needed something monstrous to fight their wars for them and twisted their own blood to make those monsters, then sent them out into the Grey Places and lost them there.

  You lie. A thin smile smears across the pale features, but uncertainty hovers at the corners. You think you can confuse us with these … fantasies?

  I think I don’t have to. Ringil masters his rage, raises his hand. Codes—you want to get this for me? Put it into their heads the way you did into mine?

  I am not sure if—

  I’m a, what was it, Core Blood commander, right?

  The voice of the Codes and the Binding Force hesitates a beat. Yes …

  Then I’m giving you a Core Blood command. This is a fresh protocol. Tell these fake antique fuckwits who they really are.

  Another pause, but shorter now. As you command.

  Thank you.

  And he watches it fall on them.

  Like a wind through the steppe grass at evening, like chop in the wake of a big ship’s passing, he sees the armored ranks sway. Sees hands raised to helmed heads as if pain. Hears a choked sobbing rise from a thousand armored throats. A hard glee fills him at the sound, a crackling, laughing sheet of flame licking up from the pit of his stomach. The words rise to his lips as if chosen by some other speaker.

  That’s right, he bawls down at them. That’s who you really are, you stupid fucks—the lost and wandering bastard children of men. And we don’t want you back, we never did.

  Say good-bye to your weapon, dwenda—this is demob. I’m here to melt it down.

  He raises his hand again.

  Codes—

  Something changes.

  The cold breeze stops blowing, the light shifts and tilts away. Time stands still, he feels it stop like the breeze on his face. Figures stand there in the gloom, about a dozen strong. They are not dwenda—too varied, too ragged around the e
dges. It takes him a couple of seconds to understand who he’s looking at.

  The Dark Court, come at last.

  CHAPTER 65

  alling Angel—up out of her boot and in her hand, faster than thought. She lashed out with the blade, drove a gutting stroke up and at the belly beneath the wolf-skin cloak.

  Something stopped the blow in its tracks.

  For the count of six thudding heartbeats, she strained to complete the stroke. Saw Falling Angel’s tip tremble with the locked forces that held the blade immobile in the air. Looked up in disbelief and saw a wintry smile on the lined face opposite. Then the figure made an abrupt upward gesture with one arm, like hurling something in her face. She blinked, but the gnarled open hand never touched her. Instead, another unseen force hit her in the chest like a warhorse kick. Lifted her fully off her feet, punched her backward, dumped her brutally on the ground.

  Jagged agony spiked through her side all over again. Falling Angel flew from her grasp. She grunted. Feels like that lance blow broke a couple of ribs after all, Archidi. She tried to breathe through the pain.

  Poltar the shaman—yeah, got to be him, who else going to dress that badly around here—took a couple of paces closer. Stood looking down on her and then, inexplicably, spoke to her in High Kir.

  “So the Goddess was right. The Dragonbane sends a demon from the veins of the earth to do his dirty work for him.”

  She blinked dazedly up at him. Heard the words in her head well enough, but the shaman’s lips didn’t seem to be mouthing the same syllables. She shook her head to clear it. Poltar grinned at her and nodded.

  “Yes, She has given me your tongue to speak, so that I may explain to you your doom. It is her way. The Goddess serves me in all things, so that I might serve Her and help make this world pure again.”